Many thanks antiloquax for the suggestion of adding "rox -p pin", "jwm" and "rox-filer" to /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc". This worked very well! I also think that JWM is a little faster than LXDE.

As far as screen resolution is concerned, the Debian6 image does not seem to have an /etc/X11/xorg.conf. I thought that I was crazy and had maybe clobbered the file somehow, and I checked my recent installation of Ubuntu 11.04, and it did not have the file either!

I checked at wiki.debian.org/Xorg, and they said that sometimes Xorg probes your hardware at every startup for the info, and that xorg.conf may indeed not be present and the system can still function.
But you can force creation of the file by "/etc/init.d/gdm stop", "cd /etc/X11" and then "sudo Xorg -configure". I tried this and got "unable to open socket for inet 6", "no devices to configure" and "configuration failed".

I guess emulators do not allow certain things. It looks like messing around with the resolution will have to wait till I have the real hardware.

Here's an interesting development: a user on the R_pi site has fashioned a pi-laptop from a Motorola lapdock designed for an Atric android phone (66.99 pounds $84.49 USD) on amazon.com See http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=6747&start=25 .

Congradulations on your and your teams progress lobster, my you have progressed since i've been across doing testing with the mageia2 group, yes it's finished and out, so I can get back to my puppy world,

The boards hadn't even arrived back then and now your up and running!

As far as SD cards are concerned, most generally sold to the general public have a limited useage life, it's mentioned in the blurb supplied with them. However if you have access to a commercial photographer supplier you can get a commercial grade card, about 25% dearer but with much longer life and a big multiple in memory cycles.

It also may be worth having a plunge with qvwm as an alternate windowmanager, it's a 95/98/Nt lookalike and fun to use, especially as it's icon pixels rotate horizontally instead of vertically as most windowmanagers usually do.

congradulations again
scsijon_________________Puppy T290 - BarryK's Racy but with T2 Version 9.0 is suspended since barry is back. I'm going back to designing and building myzt2 a Puppy Wayland-X.

My RPi is up and running.
I had to force some of the updates (I think some of my early problems were to do with udev - not really sure).

@Lobster - have we got a plan?
I have no idea how to proceed!! I can try compiling some things, and I will try to get my puppi-like set up running and in a form that I can share with other users.

I am going to try to attach my "system.jwmrc" from the best version of Puppi I made so far. Just so people can have a look and improve upon it.
EDIT
Attached is a screenshot from my RPi.
At the moment I am just using xorg-twm. The binaries I compiled on qemu seem okay so far.
I am having a few problems with usb devices. I have 2 hubs (both of which can be powered). When I try to power them, everything stops working! So far. I haven't been able to get my wifi adapter to work (although it was working yesterday!). I will def. have to have a bit of a break from setting up to do some programming. I have Vim and GCC so I'm happy!!
mark

Congratulations on your and your teams progress lobster, my you have progressed since i've been across doing testing with the mageia2 group, yes it's finished and out, so I can get back to my puppy world,

Well I am glad you are back.
I tried the new mageia2, went for an install and then started getting bogged down in partitioning, set up etc. Decided to return to what was already set up (did you guess) - yes Puppy . . . I may have another go when I have time . . .

My second Raspberry Pi board arrived (sorry guys, was unable to cancel - it just came from Farnell in Leeds in a jiffy bag) I ordered at least twice from both distributors.
I was in a Lobsterian geek hardware feeding frenzy - not a pretty sight - during the February ordering process . . .

I think my second board is arriving today!
So far I still have only one working SD card!

EDIT
I now have 2 RPis. One is staying "mint in the box" at the moment.
I've also got a tdk 4gb sd card to boot the Pi up. I'm going to need the extra space (not least for some on-board swap-space).

I'm having better luck with one of my hubs now I am powering the Pi from it. Still not having much luck with wireless. I think it is a firmware issue. I haven't had a chance to look into this very much today (work can be very inconvenient at times).

Hoping to do a little coding tonight once I have the 4gb card populated with the file-system that I've been working with.
mark_________________My System:Arch-Arm on RPi!
"RacyPy" puplet on Toshiba Tecra 8200. PIII, 256 MB RAM.
RaspberryPy: Lobster and I blog about the RPi.

Yes, the SD card thing seems to be very tricky!
I tried "dd" ing the 2nd partition from my stable card to the one that I'd got booting (but just with the original downloaded image on it). When I did "startx" on the copy I had mouse / keyboard problems again.

I decided to re-compile Python 3.14. For some reason, when I tried to copy across the version I had already built, I had some rather strange error messages (to do with $PYTHONHOME). I suppose I should have tried to research and fix this, but I went for the "easy" option and started again.

My Pi is now shaping up as a decent programming environment - Python (with Pygame), Ruby, Lua, GCC. I'm going to have a look at installing OpenJDK7 this evening.

The Computers-At-School people (as represented on the RPi forum by "Commander Coder" seem to be keen to see Greenfoot and GeoGebra on the RPi. I'm hoping to get those in place and then perhaps get JWM going.
mark_________________My System:Arch-Arm on RPi!
"RacyPy" puplet on Toshiba Tecra 8200. PIII, 256 MB RAM.
RaspberryPy: Lobster and I blog about the RPi.

Programming is the most developed aspect of the Debian Squeeze install. I was particularly impressed with the Scratch speed of loading. Not too fond of Scratch but kids like it.

We have to understand this SD thing.
I now remember we only got the SD card working initially after formatting from a Windows machine. Que?
I don't have a Windows machine in the house. I would feel dirty.

Something strange is going on. I blame the conspiracy theorists. ARM + Linux + formatting any SD card is surely possible? They surely should have a higher life expectancy of one month reliable usage?

edit: just found I was using a very early image (March 2012) of Arch
- that might explain why I could not even use basic command line options such as updating pacman. Oh Buddha!

I am also having problems with:

1. Used cfdisk and removed all partitions from SD card
2. sdc not being recognized with drive icons
3. image copied from command line but SD writer still flashing
- will not remove until that stops or I get bored . . .

I am managing to keep my sanity (what little I have) by watching 'Green Wing' on 4OD for Ipad whilst awaiting long winded writes to SD.
Must admit I find the Ipad a useful ref. I can zoom into a web page of info and type in commands . . . I am really making use of the console/terminal/command line/bash prompt (are they not all the same?)_________________Puppy WIKI

I now remember we only got the SD card working initially after formatting from a Windows machine.

That's not my experience .

I have 3 SD cards, all from PNY.

1 some years old 16GB, the last times formatted with Gparted, I think 3 partitions ext3.

2 new 8GB cards, class 10 with original VFAT.

All 3 are working with my Rasp, one with Debian, one with Arch and one with OpenElec/Raspbmc. I didn't reformat anything, just used dd command.

The last days I was playing with Raspbmc. It was the first time that I've seen 1080p movies on my screen (some play smooth, some with glitches and some don't play). By now only mp4 seems to be working. Coverted some mpg movies with Handbrake. Seems to be a good program for this.

I wasted many hours in Arch to mount usb sticks . I tried 2 different sticks (1 with VFAT and one with ext3) but nothing happend. After many hours I tried a 3rd one (3 ext3 partitions), which worked as expected. Needs more testing, maybe because a passive usb hub?

Been wasting my time ordering a dishwasher and I may have to plant some parsley this afternoon. Which reminds me, we had some parsley were the stems tasted like chilli - for the first time I really think parsley is a good 'erb (I am a chilli addict). Is this normal or is it really old parsley (could be the third year and it only grows for two . . .)?

@antiloquax
PNY cards were the cheapest ones in the store where I bought them (8Gb class 10, 13.99€). All others were more expensive or were only class 4.

The older one (16GB) I used all the time in my Eee since ~2008 without any problem.

The problem with usb sticks, they were not recognized in /dev/. Plugging in, plugging out, no difference. Nothing like sdXX. Only when I plugged in the 3rd stick, sda, sda1 and so on popped up. I used one usb slot for wireless mouse dongle and the 2nd one for a passive usb hub, where I connected the keyboard and one usb stick. Keyboard was allways working. Power supply, from my Motorola smartphone, output 5.1V, 850mA. Maybe the problem is solved, now I have a wireless Logitech keyboard with touch pad (39.99€) and an active hub..But I've not tested the usb stick because I was busy with Raspbmx .

@Lobster

Quote:

Was sound working too?

Yes, with Raspbmx ootb, with Arch when I use modprobe snd_bcm2835. I don't need sudo because I'm allways root (Puppy damaged ).

Since my Gericom refuses to work, I use older Puppies (too busy to upgrade ), Slacko 5.3 and Luci-528 without update.
About http://puppylinux.org/wikka/PuppiArch and JWM:
I think at least xinit is missing. I used the steps given by Tman in his first post, I think it was on page 2 of this thread.

Parsley is very healthy. I use it often but never had the taste of chili. The plant needs 2 years for blooming the first time. Maybe the taste changes after that? Also there are many different sorts of parsley. OK, off topic, but I couldn't resist .